


the last of the great romantics

by acroamatica



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Breakfast in Bed, M/M, hux fails absolutely at normal people things, kylo just wants a hug, romance as planned by the galaxy's greatest tactician
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-23
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-07-26 05:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7562572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acroamatica/pseuds/acroamatica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren comes back from a mission out of sorts and wanting something more from General Hux.</p><p>The galaxy's greatest tactical mind can surely figure out a simple request like that. Absolutely. Without doubt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the last of the great romantics

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CyanideBreathmint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyanideBreathmint/gifts).



> for my best beloved cowriter, who is having a tough time right now and wanted a silly little fic. i hope this fits the bill.

It had been four and one half standard days and Hux had had enough. Ren had been sent on a mission and had come back empty-handed, cheated of his prize. He was touchy enough at the best of times, liable to fly into wild rages at the slightest provocation, but after a defeat he was completely impossible.

He’d barely spoken to Hux for days, despite them ostensibly sharing quarters; Hux had done his best not to notice the aggrieved sighs and the way Ren thumped his mask down on the table before throwing himself into bed and pretending to sleep. If he didn’t want to talk, Hux certainly wasn’t going to go out of his way to make him do so.

But Ren hadn’t even kissed him, hadn’t even touched him in four and a half days, since he’d come back, and when he’d seen Ren off on the mission a week prior he’d had to be dragged into a handy storage closet on the way to the hangar so that Ren could unmask and kiss him - thoroughly enough that Hux had found it difficult to maintain his usual perfect composure as he stood at parade rest and watched the shuttle take off.

This was beyond a normal tantrum. This was _personal_. And personally, Hux was done with it.

“All right, out with it,” he said, to the dark figure currently curled up in his bed in a tangle of robes. “I know you’re not sleeping, and you’re going to tell me what on earth I’ve done to you to deserve this treatment.”

“Nothing,” Ren said, sulky and curt. “You’ve done nothing. You never do anything.”

“Well then,” Hux said, frustrated, “what, for stars’ sake, is your problem?”

“That planet you sent me to,” Ren said. “Did you know they have an annual lovers’ festival? It’s exactly what you’d think. Everyone seems to spend all of their time attached to someone else, a partner. It’s a revolting display.”

“So it’s put you off?” Hux squinted at him. “I still don’t understand how that’s my fault.”

“What’s put me off,” Ren growled, “is watching hundreds of people doing frankly ridiculous… _couple things_. And realising not once have you ever done anything like that for me.”

“Of course I haven’t,” Hux said. “You’ve just _said_ they were ridiculous. Why should I do something we both know is ridiculous?”

“I don’t - you don’t understand,” Ren said, and turned his face into the pillow.

“No, I really _don’t,_ ” Hux said, feeling quite at the end of his tether.

Ren didn’t answer. Hux sighed, and went back to his desk. Perhaps he would make more sense later.

Once Ren had actually fallen asleep and could probably be trusted not to be reading Hux’s mind, just quietly, Hux turned his mind back to the problem. As far as logic applied to Ren, it seemed that he wanted Hux to do something that he’d clearly stated he knew was not going to happen, nor should it. Hux knew next to nothing about romance - certainly this arrangement they had had not been arrived at through gentle courtship. It had merely been a recognition of a mutually beneficial solution to a variety of problems. He found Ren attractive but infuriating, and Ren had felt similarly; it had been a tactically sound decision to attempt to resolve the conflict by letting the attraction have the upper hand for a change, and oddly enough Ren had infuriated him far less in his bed than he did on his bridge. And far less on his bridge after he’d been in Hux’s bed. All up, Hux thought it had been an extremely successful operation. Right up until now.

Now it seemed to be up to Hux to soothe Ren’s injured feelings - because of course Ren would have feelings that could be inconveniently injured. If he wanted to continue this… relationship - if that was what it was, then he needed to be…

Romantic.

What a horrendous thought. 

He eyed the sleeping heap of Ren, and wondered what _he_ could possibly know about romance.

It wasn’t as though his options were unlimited, either. They couldn’t very well run away to some sort of pleasure district and stuff themselves with exotic foods with aphrodisiac properties that were mostly a myth. Nor could they dance the night away to sinuous music. Nothing could be done about the lack of places to buy unexpected and glittering gifts.

He cast his mind back over every piece of media he’d ever managed to glance at that covered romance, and discarded all of them as impractical, verging on impossible.

Even a room with a view was a challenge. They were in hyperspace and there wasn’t much to look at out the viewports.

Candles were impossible. Long soaks in tubs full of oils and hot water were impossible. He supposed he could manage a massage, but Ren hadn’t so much as patted his shoulder in four days. It was quite an escalation.

There was exactly one thing he could think of that seemed even slightly plausible.

It was considered romantic in some cultures, many of them human, to serve one’s romantic partner the morning meal while they were still in bed. He suspected Kylo Ren might have come across this custom previously, so he would be aware of the protocols; Ren certainly ate, so the gesture would at least be practical, which made it somewhat less ridiculous. And if it all went wrong, at least the fallout would be contained to his quarters and not discussed around the entire ship for days.

It seemed logical enough to attempt it. Even if it was 0200 and he would normally have been joining Ren in bed for a few hours of rest. He could prepare much of this ahead of time.

Now, how was this traditionally done? He knew that the meal was usually brought in on a tray of some sort. There would be a drink and a variety of foods for the recipient to sample. There was traditionally some decoration to make the tray appear fancier. All of this seemed simple enough.

He could get the food first thing in the morning, as soon as the Finalizer’s kitchen was open. Quickly, he sent a request to the kitchen to have the droid that usually brought his meal bring two portions, and deliver them thirty minutes earlier than usual. That way, he thought, if things became unexpectedly… romantic, he might still make the start of his shift on time.

That would do for that. All that remained was the matter of a tray, and of decoration.

The droid would bring a tray. As long as he was awake to intercept it, perhaps he could convince it to leave it behind. Excellent.

But decoration was much harder. Hux had very little in his quarters by way of knick-knacks or fripperies - they were a waste of space and mass allocations. 

Still, something could be managed. He remembered some of the lessons from his youth - very early on, there had been something when they were learning about geometry and two-dimensional transformations of shapes. He pulled a sheet of flimsi from his desk, and some scissors, and set about folding the flimsi into a long, slim triangle with many layers inside it.

If he recalled correctly, trimming small portions out of the sides of the triangle should repeat the pattern throughout the sheet of paper. This would produce a pleasing effect, something like latticework or lace.

He cut carefully away at the flimsi, and trimmed the edges, and unfolded it carefully so as not to tear the webwork that was left. It was delicate, but he had a precise hand and he was pleased with the design.

He folded a second one, just in case - it wouldn’t do, if there were to be two sets of dishes, for only one to be adorned. That one was different - it was hard to replicate a design exactly, but he had thought of improvements and was confident he was closer to the optimal lattice design.

He shut the completed lattices in his desk drawer, for safekeeping. That was something. But when he visualised the tray, in his mind, it was lacking something.

Generally, as he recalled, it was customary to have some sort of flower, in a small vase. There was nothing of that sort available onboard the Finalizer, of course - what hydroponics there were were devoted entirely to edible plants and nothing that wasted energy by flowering. Mostly seaweeds. Even Hux was quite aware there was nothing at all romantic about seaweed.

Fine. He had made the latticework, he could make some sort of flower out of flimsi. Papercrafts were simple and he could certainly look up a pattern.

An hour later, with six attempts crumpled at his feet, he cradled the seventh flower gingerly and surveyed it from all angles. At last it was even, it was symmetrical - it was properly structured and the fold lines were crisp. It would do.

He tucked it in his drawer beside the lattices, and took himself to bed.

At 0500, he was awake again, awaiting the droid. Ren had long ago learned to sleep through Hux’s alarm, and he was still snoring gently when the door opened to admit the droid - with two mugs of caf and two tall glasses of greyish paste.

Hux stared at the tray in something like horror. He had forgotten, of course, that it was the fifth day of the kitchen’s ten-day rotation - and the morning meal on Day 5 was of course the highly nutritious and absolutely flavourless protein and vitamin blend. He never minded it normally, but it was so… uninspiring.

The droid lifted the mugs and the glasses onto Hux’s desk, where he normally took his meal, and then tucked the tray into a slot in its body and rolled towards the door.

“Wait,” Hux said quickly. “You will leave the tray.”

The droid gave a negatory beep and continued rolling out into the corridor.

Hux wanted to chase it, force it to give up the tray - but it wouldn’t, and it was ridiculous to even consider disabling a First Order droid simply to extract the tray from it.

He would simply have to… find an alternative.

He cast his eyes around his quarters. There didn’t seem to be much by way of detachable flat surfaces - a datapad wouldn’t support the weight, nor provide a stable surface.

The only thing that could possibly be large enough was the detachable lid of the storage locker where he kept his spare boots.

It would have to do. Perhaps Ren wouldn’t notice. The clasps attached to the box, not the lid. It would… it would do.

He gave it a careful dusting-off with the sleeve of his sleeping shirt, then set it on the desk and pulled out the lattices. At least they added something. He set the glasses of grey paste on top of them, carefully in the centre. The mugs of caf would balance best in the middle of the tray, so they went there. And if he carried it in and set it down, the right side would be closest to Ren, so he pulled out the one successful flower and placed it gently on the corner of the tray, next to Ren’s glass.

With the setup complete, he returned to the bedroom, dressed hastily and silently, and then went to the bed and reached out to shake Ren’s shoulder.

“What?” Ren mumbled, into the pillow. “S’not time.”

“Wake up,” Hux said. “I need to… show you something.”

Ren rolled onto his back and blinked grumpily at Hux. “What could be more important than sleep?”

“Wait,” Hux said. “Stay there.”

He didn’t run back out to the main room, but he walked fast. His return with the tray, however, was slow and careful - he was unaccustomed to carrying anything so unwieldy, and the caf threatened to slosh out of the mugs if he walked at a normal pace.

Ren was sitting up in bed by the time Hux got back into the bedroom.

“What are you doing?” he asked, genuinely baffled.

“I,” said Hux, as he picked his way across the floor, “am bringing you the morning meal, which we will share in bed. It’s a custom on many worlds -”

“Hux, I know what breakfast in bed is,” Ren said. “What I mean is, what are you doing carrying it on the lid of a storage locker?”

“It was the best tool available,” Hux said haughtily, determined not to blush. He set the tray down on the covers of the bed.

“What are these?” Ren plucked at the edge of one of the flimsi lattices.

“Decoration,” Hux said shortly. “It’s traditional.”

“Is _this_ traditional?” Ren poked at the little flimsiplast flower, and suddenly Hux saw it for the ridiculous attempt it was - he’d had enough, that was all he could take.

“I will be on the bridge,” he said, and strode out as fast as he could.

No-one asked any questions about why the General was half an hour early for his shift - it wasn’t uncommon. He got a cup of caf and drank it grouchily, wishing for more - wishing that he hadn’t been stuck on board the Finalizer, wishing that his arrangement with Ren had never developed such complications, wishing that it could somehow have never happened at all.

Ren didn’t appear on the bridge at all that morning. Nor in the afternoon. It was a blessing, Hux thought. He didn’t need, on top of everything else, to have to face down that mask of Ren’s and attempt to deal with him in front of all of his staff.

Near the end of his shift, though, a message came through to his comm:

_KYLO REN >> Come to my quarters when you are off-duty._

Hux wanted to groan. No doubt he’d be in for a night of Ren huffing around some more, refusing to talk to him - or perhaps Ren would say his bit and then tell him to leave. That had happened before. But he had called Hux there, which implied that he at least had something to say. 

His shift finished at 1800, nominally, but it was nearly 1900 by the time he was done with the day’s paperwork and he still had a datapad with reports to read stuck under his arm as he made his way to Ren’s quarters.

Ren let him in, and took his shoulder, pushing him through the main room of his quarters as he said, “You’re late.”

“I’m always late,” Hux said irritably. “Why would that matter -”

And then they were through into Ren’s bedroom, and he understood.

There were two trays, set carefully on the straightened covers of Ren’s bed - two trays laden with dinner, which Ren must have had sent up from the mess hall, and a carafe of water, and the flimsi lattices peeking out from under the plates.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” Ren said. “I didn’t mean to laugh.”

“It’s fine,” Hux said, even though it stung a little that Ren had beaten him at his own game.

“I wanted to make it up to you.” He gestured to the bed. “It’s not much. But. Sit with me.”

And then Hux noticed, on the shelf above the bed that had been bare, in a shallow glass dish: the little folded flower.

Perhaps, he thought, curious about the sudden warm feeling spreading through him… perhaps there might be something to this romance business.


End file.
